Serein
by LoLoGreeneVines
Summary: "If I were rain, That joins sky and earth that otherwise never touch, Could I join two hearts as well?" Orihime Inoue and Uryu Ishida discover that they share a common viewpoint.


It had been a good while since the evening sky in Karakura had looked so beautiful, Uryu thought.

Feeling the chill of winter seeping through his clothes, he drew his coat tighter around his shoulders and glanced up from his vantage point, a lonely bench at the edge of the park, and saw that the indigo heavens were cloudless, for once. He couldn't remember the sky being anything other than overcast since he had returned from Hueco Mundo in November, and now it was January and Uryu had become thoroughly fed up of his classmates complaining about the weather patterns of Japan.

_It's winter. Get over it._

Still, it was a pity that after two months of nothing but bad weather, the clouds parted on the one evening there happened to be a new moon.

A light breeze gently shook the leafless branches of a nearby tree, and Uryu felt a fine spray of cool water hitting his face. Tilting his head further upwards, he realised that a light rain was falling from the cloudless, ever-darkening sky; not quite drizzle, but a substantial enough mist to gather in drops which raced each other down his face.

Uryu closed his eyes and found himself listening to the peaceful sound of raindrops hitting the pavement at his feet, inhaling the scent of petrichor on the breeze, feeling his hair gradually becoming waterlogged and clinging in stringy strands to his face, ignoring the voice of reason in his head which told him that he really shouldn't stay outside because it was _January_ and he was going to freeze if he wasn't careful.

He didn't know how long he had sat there for, lost in serenity, when a shuffling noise on the bench beside him startled him out of his reverie.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" a very familiar voice said. "I didn't mean to disturb you!"

Uryu turned his head towards his unexpected companion, felt his eyes widen unconsciously and was immediately grateful that his glasses had fogged up while his eyes were closed.

After he had recovered from the initial surprise of Orihime Inoue appearing next to him as if by magic, Uryu rubbed the condensation from his glasses and got a good look at her in the dim light afforded by the last remnants of the sun's rays. Her honey-coloured hair had darkened in the rain and was hanging in straggly chestnut clumps down her back and arms, her fringe was hanging loose from its clips, plastering itself against her face and partially obscuring her eyes, and her blue jumper was speckled around her shoulders and chest from the raindrops.

"No umbrella?" Uryu asked, raising an eyebrow as he reflexively undid his coat and draped it around Orihime's slim shoulders. "You'll catch a cold if you're not careful."

Orihime frowned, her delicate eyebrows drawing together as her doe-like eyes narrowed. "No, I won't," she pouted. "Colds are caused by viruses, not the rain. You should know that, Uryu."

"I do. I was teasing," Uryu countered, noticing the way Orihime's narrow shoulders were twitching under his coat. "Are you all right? You look uncomfortable, you're not too cold, are you? Look, you can do the toggles up..."

"I'm not cold."

Uryu blinked.

Orihime smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry, Uryu. I appreciate the gesture, but I can't wear your coat. You'd only get cold yourself, and, if I'm honest, I only came outside in the first place to feel the rain." She shrugged out of the coat and handed it back with a smile.

Uryu accepted the coat doubtfully and drew it back around himself, where the lingering aroma of Orihime's honey and vanilla shampoo mixed with the fresh scent of the rain. "What do you mean?"

She grinned at this, tilting her head back and smiling as the rain hit her face. "Can I tell you a secret, Uryu?"

"You can tell me anything," he affirmed without hesitation.

She turned her head to face him and gave an half-smile, one corner of her mouth turned up beneath thoughtful eyes. "I've always been a bit jealous of you," she said, to his surprise. "I always wanted to be the rain, to be the link that connects. The rain tethers the earth and the heavens together, bonding two completely different worlds by giving them something in common; a joining thread."

Uryu stared at the floor as he remembered the first lines of a poem he had written long ago for a particularly odd homework assignment.

_We are drawn to each other,_

_Like drops of water, like the planets_

He could see exactly where she was coming from.

"And yet, you _are_ the rain," she continued, staring at her hands in her lap. "It's even in your name. _Rain Dragon_."

Uryu's mouth moved before he could stop it. "My mother once told me that she gave me my name because she first told my father she loved him in the rain."

Orihime's head snapped up as she regarded him with eyes as round as saucers, and he immediately regretted telling her that particular story. Fully expecting her to respond with a barrage of questions about the mother he never spoke of to anybody, it was a surprise when she simply nodded her head in earnest vigour. "See, the rain brings people together!"

"I quite agree," he murmured, eager to forget his slip-up.

The pair sat in comfortable silence for a minute, the hush only broken by the sound of the rain hitting the concrete ground and the occasional small, wet _slap_ of a tendril of Orihime's rain-soaked hair hitting her back every time the wind eased off slightly.

After a while, she spoke. "The only problem is that the rain never hangs around for long after the sun comes out."

"There's always that," Uryu sighed, sitting up straight in his seat as the final two lines of his poem occurred to him.

_We repulse each other,_

_Like magnets, like the colours of our skin._

Why did everything have to be so complicated?

"I suppose this is why the night exists," said Uryu. "When it rains in the evening, the sun goes away and the water's still there when you wake up in the morning."

Orihime smiled bitterly. "Ah, but the sun never truly goes away, does it? Not while there's a moon in the sky to reflect its light. Even new moons only last for one night. It'll be back tomorrow."

"True. But you can bet that the clouds will have returned to obscure the moon by then, likely with more rain. Such is the way in Japan."

"Such is the way," Orihime repeated, tucking a lock of her wet hair behind her ear.

They had sat there in companionable peace for another ten minutes before Orihime decided that she needed to get tomorrow's homework done, and Uryu had gladly walked her home. When he had finally returned to his own flat, he contemplated the distance between himself and her, and decided that although they remained as separate as the ground and the sky, he had never felt closer to Orihime.

It was amazing what a difference the rain could make.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes: I originally intended for this to be a shorter ficlet to go in my collection of IshiHime prompts inspired by Wiktionary's "random word" button. The prompt for this one was "serein", or a fine rain falling from a cloudless sky after sunset, but then it mutated into over a thousand words of introspection inspired by the common theme of water bringing people together which is present in Orihime's and Uryu's volume poems, so I decided to publish it as a stand-alone one-shot set during the time-skip. I hope you liked it. :)<strong>

**Orihime's and Uryu's poems were written by Kubo-sensei, and I don't take credit for them.**


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